pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) (09/20/85)
Steve Swope responded to my article on gnosticism by claiming that what I was saying implied simply that God and Satan were not the same. What you forgot, Steve, is that I also said that gnosticism is rife with the same assumption that other God whorshiping religions make. That assumption is that the ultimate God must be good. I don't believe that for a minute. If God exists as you picture Him and Satan exists as some stumbling block between us and the ``good'' God, then why has a ``good'' God left such a stumbling block between Him and us? Any explanation you come up with has got to be incredibly distorted for the purpose of maintaining the belief in a benevolent God. Why not simply accept the fact that if the evidence is there in favor of some evil deity (and you would seem to admit that), then either he is the ultimate God himself (which is what I believe), or at best, his ``boss'' is no better than he is. It is not an issue of naming, it is an issue of misnaming, and attributing separate names to God for when He visibly engages in evil (a ``nomme de mal'') and for when He claims to be the almighty good. Certainly God has taken no steps to eradicate Satan (wouldn't that be suicide of a sort?). In fact, He has propped him (Himself) up as the ruler of the domain of earthly souls. Be well, -- Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories pyuxn!pez
bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron C. Howes) (09/23/85)
In article <353@pyuxn.UUCP> pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) writes: > >What you forgot, Steve, is that I also said that gnosticism is rife with >the same assumption that other God whorshiping religions make. That >assumption is that the ultimate God must be good. (*sigh*) That simply isn't true. Gnostics believe that the "ultimate G-d" (your words, not mine) is beyond notions of good and evil and the sort of direct interference that is implied by such notions. Satan does not exist, or at least is imprecisely defined, in the context of Gnostic belief. There are those who espouse Satan as a facet of the Demiurge, an idea which does clarify an inconsistant duality in christian thought, but this Satan is not the soul-grabbing bearded nemesis of the middle ages. Gnostics are more concerned with the duality of the spiritual and the material than in notions of good and evil Demiurges. -- Byron C. Howes ...!{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch
pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) (10/01/85)
Byron, Saying that "God (the ultimate God or some intermediary OR the only God, which ever it is) is beyond good and evil" is the same as making God beyond our judgment, which is what the God whorshipers do. It also makes assumptions about an ultimate God existing of necessity (and being ``good'') if the God we come into contact with is the pig monster we have come to know. Be well, -- Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories pyuxn!pez